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Katsunami · 01-21-2012, 01:52 PM

After looking into editing EPUB and/or MOBI books, without having to rip them apart, I just started wondering (and searching). Why isn't LaTeX used to do the editing for eBooks? Some people have tried it without much succes, converting the LaTeX source into HTML and then converting that into EPBUB or MOBI.

People who do academic publishing will know LaTeX well: it's a very old format, but it is still updated with new functions today. It is even used for many novels; my copy of Lord of the Rings is written in LaTeX; I can tell, because the publisher used the default output profile, and because the book has some ligatures in it that only the default LaTeX supported at the time of printing.

I've written quite some stuff in LaTeX myself, and it's so easy when you know the basics; you just write and write and write, using the occasional command such as \textbf{} (bold text) here or there, hit a button, and a perfectly formatted PDF comes out the other side. It should be possible to create an EPUB from the same source. If so, I would be able to typeset Gutenberg TXT-files into perfect books into less than half an hour. (And as said, the conversion can be done, but it's hardly perfect.)

The reasong why I wonder about this is, that LaTeX is virtually bug-free, and feature-laden. If there is anything that you can't do with LaTeX in typesetting, then it's generally believed that you can't do it with other typesetters, or even shouldn't do it at all. The language can create chapters, paragraphs, table of contents, can use pictures, make mathematical formulae, tables, lists, enumerations... everything. I never encountered something that couldn't be done.

Also, because it's open-source, and it has such a long history, it can be converted into basically anything. There are some converters out there that try to do a LaTeX to EPUB conversion (I've found PanDOC, for example), but they are far from perfect.

Any idea's, why people are trying to create and typeset books using a markup language such as HTML, which is far from perfect for this task, instead of using a language such as LaTeX, that is *created* for specifically creating and typesetting books, and then convert it into a file readable by an ereader?

edit: I'm going to try it with a short classic, Black Beauty, for which I cannot find a "flawless" formatted version. I'll see what LaTeX, htlatex, pandoc, sigil and calibre can do when combined together. Making a TEX-file from the Gutenberg TXT is trivial...

Sorry for putting this into the wrong forum. Should have looked better.

01-21-2012, 01:52 PM	#1
Katsunami Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,111 Karma: 34000001 Join Date: Mar 2008 Device: KPW1, KA1	EPUB, MOBI, PDF... LaTeX! After looking into editing EPUB and/or MOBI books, without having to rip them apart, I just started wondering (and searching). Why isn't LaTeX used to do the editing for eBooks? Some people have tried it without much succes, converting the LaTeX source into HTML and then converting that into EPBUB or MOBI. People who do academic publishing will know LaTeX well: it's a very old format, but it is still updated with new functions today. It is even used for many novels; my copy of Lord of the Rings is written in LaTeX; I can tell, because the publisher used the default output profile, and because the book has some ligatures in it that only the default LaTeX supported at the time of printing. I've written quite some stuff in LaTeX myself, and it's so easy when you know the basics; you just write and write and write, using the occasional command such as \textbf{} (bold text) here or there, hit a button, and a perfectly formatted PDF comes out the other side. It should be possible to create an EPUB from the same source. If so, I would be able to typeset Gutenberg TXT-files into perfect books into less than half an hour. (And as said, the conversion can be done, but it's hardly perfect.) The reasong why I wonder about this is, that LaTeX is virtually bug-free, and feature-laden. If there is anything that you can't do with LaTeX in typesetting, then it's generally believed that you can't do it with other typesetters, or even shouldn't do it at all. The language can create chapters, paragraphs, table of contents, can use pictures, make mathematical formulae, tables, lists, enumerations... everything. I never encountered something that couldn't be done. Also, because it's open-source, and it has such a long history, it can be converted into basically anything. There are some converters out there that try to do a LaTeX to EPUB conversion (I've found PanDOC, for example), but they are far from perfect. Any idea's, why people are trying to create and typeset books using a markup language such as HTML, which is far from perfect for this task, instead of using a language such as LaTeX, that is created for specifically creating and typesetting books, and then convert it into a file readable by an ereader? edit: I'm going to try it with a short classic, Black Beauty, for which I cannot find a "flawless" formatted version. I'll see what LaTeX, htlatex, pandoc, sigil and calibre can do when combined together. Making a TEX-file from the Gutenberg TXT is trivial... Sorry for putting this into the wrong forum. Should have looked better. Last edited by Katsunami; 01-21-2012 at 02:08 PM.